


in the mood for a melody

by everytuesday



Series: monster!quentin [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, S4 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 03:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: The Monster starts singing. At first, it’s just humming an odd little tune that Eliot can’t quite make out, but it keeps humming the same song over and over and over again, almost absently.“Help, I’m alive,” the Monster hums.“What did you say?”“It’s the noise in my head... Music? It won’t leave,” the Monster says.“You have… a song stuck in your head?”“That sounds right,” the Monster nods and starts humming again in Quentin’s creaky, off-key voice, “Help, I’m alive my heart keeps beating like a hammer.”---Despite being possessed by the Monster, Quentin is very much alive and gets creative in figuring out how to let his friends know.





	in the mood for a melody

**Author's Note:**

> Probably don't need to read the previous fic in the series, since you get a recap of what happened from Q's POV anyway, but they do go together.

Penny always gave Quentin crap about his wards being shit, but Quentin never thought the consequences would be more than the inconvenience of psychics knowing what embarrassing song was stuck in his head or showing up in his sex dreams.

It turns out there are far worse consequences. Namely, getting possessed and not being able to protect himself from the monster running the show from inside his head. Instead of being tucked away behind wards, safe and oblivious, he’s treated to a front row seat of the havoc the Monster wreaks with his body.

Literally a front row seat. The unwarded place in his mind takes the form of an empty movie theater auditorium, where whatever the Monster’s seeing is thrown up on the screen and he can scream and shout and throw things as much as he wants, but it never does any good. He can  _ feel  _ too. All the emotions hang heavy in the air around him and sometimes he can hear the Monster’s thoughts. The Monster can hear all of his, he’s sure. Once, he started singing, out of boredom, and the Monster started humming the same tune. Sometimes Quentin does it on purpose, now, to annoy him.

It wasn’t like that in the beginning. It was Brian, then, alone in the auditorium. He didn’t understand what was going on and thought he was in the middle of a psychotic break. Brian’s memories are blurry and Quentin can’t recall much beyond the constant, loud panic, but he does remember Eliot.

Well, Nigel.

Brian didn’t care about Nigel, but Quentin sort of retroactively cares whenever he tries processing those unfamiliar memories, which, he has a lot of time to do that now, so it happens more often than he’d like.

Nigel wasn’t entirely Eliot, but he also wasn’t  _ not  _ Eliot. From the tiny glimpse of Nigel before the Monster nabbed him, high off his ass outside an exclusive club, he seemed much like the facade Eliot created around himself at Brakebills. Loud, theatrical, hedonistic. Probably a blast at parties.

Nigel tried to run a lot, at first, certainly more than Brian would have. After the third or fourth time getting his arm broken for his trouble, he gave up, though he maintained a certain level of snark about the whole affair, which entertained the Monster to no end.

Then Nigel was Eliot again.

And Brian became Quentin, still smashed down by the Monster and still painfully aware. It’s not a foreign feeling, exactly. Being trapped in his own head with only his thoughts and a Monster who wishes he was dead just sounds like another Wednesday without meds.

The Monster can’t kill him or it would have already. Quentin is too awake and too attached to everything for the Monster to be able to do much without hurting itself, so the Monster mostly tries to ignore him, which Quentin is sure is better than the alternative.

As the others leave to struggle with their own quests, Eliot and Julia stay because--

Julia stays because she’s Julia and because she loves him. Eliot is less clear, but he suspects guilt over being the reason the Monster got loose in the first place is part of it. And because Eliot cares about him, even if it’s not--

Eliot cares. He’d be stupid to deny it, he knows all his friends care about him and Eliot is no exception, so that care combined with guilt? Yeah, it makes sense that Eliot is sticking around even if Quentin wishes he wouldn’t because the Monster likes Eliot.  _ Really  _ likes Eliot. And Eliot is trying very hard to keep the Monster liking him, which Quentin tries to rationalize again and again as something that will make things easier for all of them, but it still makes Quentin want to crawl out of his skin, watching Eliot charm the Monster.

Julia just sort of watches them sadly and keeps busy working to help the Monster find its pieces. She’ll get it eventually, he’s sure, but he wishes he could help them. He circles the length of the theater a good hundred times and there’s no way out. It’s just him in this box, waiting and watching and hoping today won’t be the day the Monster snaps and rips Eliot’s spine out.

Eliot’s so over-confident about his sway with the Monster, he even teaches the Monster to pretend to be Quentin.

For his dying father.

Julia and Eliot talk the Monster through parts of what Quentin would want to say, but there’s more that the Monster can’t begin to articulate in his clumsy repeating of Eliot and Julia’s phrases.

_ Tell him you’re sorry!  _ Quentin shouts at the screen for the sixth time in the past thirty minutes.  _ Tell him magic wasn’t worth it! Tell him you made a mistake and-- _

Quentin’s getting hoarse. He sits on the floor, presses his forehead against the seat in front of him, hiding from the glow of the screen, wishing it all away, but he hears Ted talking and forces himself to look up, to commit to memory what he knows will be the last few hours he gets with his dad.

Ted’s impending death makes the Monster sad, somehow. When Julia hugs him, Quentin thinks he can almost feel her arms too.

They leave, back to the apartment, and the Monster watches Eliot fall asleep on the couch. It thinks  _ Mine, _ mostly because it knows it will bother Quentin. Quentin’s used to that part by now. He ignores it.

The Monster gets an idea.

_ No.  _ Quentin tries to shut that idea down as soon as it forms, which makes the Monster even more keen on the idea.  _ No, leave him alone. _

The Monster slinks toward the couch, fixated on Eliot.

_ Let him sleep. You keep him up for days on end, he never gets to rest, come on! You can do your bit later, just let him sleep for now. _

“Eliot?” the Monster affects Quentin’s voice and Quentin can feel its pride when Eliot looks genuinely started.

_ Stop it! _ Quentin shouts, angry now. He throws his shoe at the screen. _ Stop! He’s not doing anything, just let him be for five seconds, you sick fucking-- _

As the Monster starts rambling off about how it’s Quentin and he’s escaped, Eliot looks so relieved and hopeful and happy all at once. The tiny part of Quentin that hopes Eliot won’t fall for it is disappointed, but it’s a very tiny part. Eliot must want to believe it so much and Quentin can’t hold it against him.

The Monster decides what it wants next and Quentin goes very still.

_ No. No, don’t do that to him. _

_ You want to kiss him and he wants to kiss you and I’m pretending to be you, so isn’t it all the same? _ the Monster shoots right back, the first time in a long while it’s bothered to talk to Quentin.

_ It’s not the same! _ Quentin tries to explain, but the Monster goes back to ignoring him. It sits down next to Eliot anyway and kisses him.

“Missed you,” Eliot says, with enough hopefulness to shatter Quentin’s heart.

The Monster tells Eliot the truth and Eliot wants it to stop pretending to be Quentin and definitely doesn’t want to keep kissing it, which makes the Monster angry.

_ Stop! _ Quentin screams when it grabs Eliot by the throat.  _ You have to stop! You’re going to kill him! _

“Get the fuck away from him,”  _ Julia. _ Striding toward the Monster. She shows none of the fear he’s sure is there, instead sets her expression to pure steel and continues, “Or I won’t help you, and you  _ need  _ me.”

“I don’t need you.”

“You want to bet? We’re all you got, asshole. You kill him and I’m out too, so where does that leave you?”

The Monster drops Eliot and sulks out of the room while Julia goes to see if he’s alright. Quentin wants to see if Eliot’s alright too, but he also doesn’t want the Monster anywhere near Eliot, so he just… sits there in the darkness, shaking.

_ He won’t ever like me as long as you’re here _ , the Monster thinks, sulking.

_ You can’t kill me, _ Quentin reminds it.

_ Yes, but  _ he  _ doesn’t know that. _

And so it tells Eliot that Quentin is dead. It’s a dirty trick, a low blow, but Quentin can play dirty too.

\---

The Monster starts singing. At first, it’s just humming an odd little tune that Eliot can’t quite make out, but it keeps humming the same song over and over and over again, almost absently.

“ _ Help, I’m alive _ ,” the Monster hums.

“What did you say?”

“It’s the noise in my head...  _ Music _ ? It won’t leave,” the Monster says.

“You have… a song stuck in your head?”

“That sounds right,” the Monster nods and starts humming again in Quentin’s creaky, off-key voice, “ _ Help, I’m alive my heart keeps beating like a hammer _ .”

It’s annoyingly human of the monster to start getting music stuck in its head. Eliot ducks his head into his book, too tired to try processing what emotions it’s bringing up. Anyway, Metric isn’t really Eliot’s taste in music (it must be somebody else’s in the apartment; he’d put his money on Julia), but it brings up some possibilities of annoying the Monster to death by getting something awful stuck in its head.

They spend too much time alone together, Eliot thinks, when a few hours later, the Monster is humming again and Eliot doesn’t have anyone to complain about it to. Julia went off with her new acolyte and Josh to try finding something to actually for real kill the Monster. Margo is busy with Fillory, the rest of them are off doing something with the Library and hedges. Honestly, Eliot stopped paying attention to anything non-Monster-related awhile ago. He’s sure all their various side projects will intersect again in some contrived way like they usually do, and he can play catch up then.

The Monster hums a different song, this time, and Eliot recognizes it right away as  _ Staying Alive. _ Which. Okay. Quentin can’t hit those high notes and the Monster definitely can’t, but it warbles along anyway. Eliot finally pulls up the actual song on his phone, which the Monster seems to enjoy, bobbing its head along pleasantly while it watches Eliot read.

It finally disappears to go check on Julia, leaving Eliot alone to start on the real research: the monster-killing research. The Monster is so incoherent to describe, it’s been hard to find any literature on the subject, but he’s trying even if he hates reading more than most things.

Eliot regrets wanting company when he answers a knock at the door twenty minutes into research and Alice Quinn has the gall to be there.

“Can I come in?” Alice asks, after a beat of them just staring at each other.

“No.” He’s actually about a second from slamming the door in her face. This whole shitshow is in no small part her responsibility. And it’s easier to blame her than it is to blame himself for shooting the Monster. If she hadn’t fucked them over, they might’ve gotten out of Blackspire long before it latched onto Quentin. Or Julia would still be at full goddess power and have fixed it already.

“Okay. So I’ll just skip the pleasantries then; I know Quentin’s dead,” Alice says.

Everyone except Eliot has said it out loud. He knows he’s in denial about it, but the Monster lying is a possibility. It could just be fucking with him, even if it doesn’t make sense because now Eliot and Julia have no reason not to kill it. Its sense of self-preservation is wack. Or it’s telling the truth. But either way, that doesn’t explain how Alice knows.

“I was locked up in the Library,” she explains before he can ask, “but I got out and I got all our books and changed them so they couldn’t track us. Um, I read his and it just  _ ended _ , so I assumed-- And then I read part of your book and I know what the Monster told you about him being dead.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I know it kissed you right before it told you he was dead. And I-- I read enough of your book to know about the Mosaic.”

She says it so calmly while Eliot sees red. He steps out into the hall with her and closes the door behind him, bracing himself against it. He can’t meet her eyes, so he just stares at a spot over her head and snarls out, “You had no fucking right to--”

He breaks off, can feel himself shaking as he thinks about what Alice would know now. It’s not the sex or the fighting that bothers him, it’s all the emotions. The little moments, the big ones. They’re all so blurry and vague, but they’re still moments that she has no right to intrude on. She doesn’t get to know about Arielle and Teddy and weddings and funerals. The enormity of what living an entire life  _ means _ .

But she read it anyway and now she knows the most intimate details of his life that he’d never dared to share even with Margo.

“I didn’t know what I was reading until I was in the middle of it.”

“It happened a year ago, why the hell would you need to go that far back in my book?”

“When it kissed you, there was a line about-- about what you were thinking. About other times Quentin had kissed you. It mentioned fifty years and I thought it had to have been an error, that maybe someone had already gotten to your books and fucked with them. I just wanted to see what had been changed.”

“And then you just kept reading? Did you read my entire book?”

“Books,” Alice corrects. “You have two, for some reason. But no, I didn’t. I skimmed the mosaic stuff, that’s it.”

“But you know all about it, now, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t understand why-- After you got those memories, how did you--? You both just ignored it?  _ Quentin  _ just ignored it?”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Look, I didn’t-- I didn’t want to get into all of this with you. I felt bad, okay? I know it was private. I’m not here to lord it over you, I just want to help you kill that thing.”

“Okay,” Eliot says, mockingly. “Okay, sure. You go ahead and kill the thing that’s holed up in Quentin’s body. Good luck with that, let me know how it goes.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Hang around until it brutally murders me.”

“Then you’ll get exactly what you want,” Alice says. “Your book ends too, in three days. The Monster rips your heart out of your chest.”

The Monster killing him had seemed inevitable, but only in the same way that drinking himself to death had once seemed inevitable. Distant. Something to make off-color joke about. It wasn’t  _ reality _ .

“You could leave,” Alice says. “Let me take care of the Monster.”

“Fuck you.”

“I told you, I just want to help.”

“Help by getting the fuck out. Thanks for invading my privacy and assuming you know how things are when you absolutely--”

The door opens behind him and Eliot’s leaned himself up against it so much that he loses his footing and goes falling backward into the arms of whoever opened the door.

It’s the Monster, judging by the tight grip and Alice’s shell shocked expression.

“There are you!” the Monster’s voice croons behind him. Eliot tries to right himself, but the Monster doesn’t let up his grip and it’s an awkward affair. Even once his feet are fully back under him, the Monster still hangs onto Eliot’s arm. “Who is she? Is she bothering you?”

The Monster’s hand drops from his arm and starts creeping up toward an all-too-familiar motion and Eliot might hate Alice but he can’t bear the thought of something in Quentin’s body killing her. It’s too cruel.

Eliot pushes himself between the Monster and Alice, settling a hand on its shoulder, “No, she’s a friend. She’s here to help.”

“Help?”

“She’s a powerful magician,” Eliot says. “Like Julia. You’ll want her on your side, trust me.”

The Monster frowns, but steps back, “Fine. She can stay.”

The Monster tugs Eliot back into the apartment and Alice follows before Eliot can argue. Julia, Josh, and Shosanna are milling about the living room and Julia gives Eliot a questioning look over Alice’s presence.

The Monster starts humming, oblivious to the reactions of the trio and instead curling onto the couch and gesturing for someone to start Netflix. Eliot moves over to it and can make out it humming  _ I’m Still Standing.  _ That just seems too on the nose now.

After the Monster’s settled in to watch Stranger Things (it finished Black Mirror weeks ago), Eliot moves back to the rest of the group and catches Alice’s arm.

“Why is  _ she  _ here, El?” Julia asks coldly, folding her arms.

“Decided to crash the party to help us whack the Monster,” Eliot says. “But it doesn’t matter. Alice, how sure are you that the book said Quentin’s dead?”

“His book ended mid-sentence. There was a note to reference to another book that I assume is the Monster’s, but I didn’t have it on hand. Why?”

“It didn’t say he was dead, did it?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“Thanks,” Eliot says. “Maybe hold off before going on all Hellblazer on it.”

“Iris gave us an ultimatum and a way to get rid of it, why aren’t we already working on it?” Josh asks.

“What way?” Eliot asks, suddenly nervous.

“A living stone. We bleed it, dump it on him, she can lock him back in Blackspire,” Julia says. “But tell me why we shouldn’t do it.”

“Because I don’t think Quentin’s dead.”

“Okay,” Julia says.

“Just like that?” Josh asks, incredulous.

“I assume you have a reason?” Julia asks Eliot and he nods.

“It’s been humming and I think it’s Quentin. First it was ‘Help I’m Alive’ and then it was ‘Staying Alive’ and now it’s ‘I’m Still Standing’? Does that not seem weird to you?”

It sounds crazy, as he says it, but Julia’s eyes light up.

“Dude, that’s such a longshot,” Josh says. “For something we don’t even know--”

“No it’s not,” Julia says. “Somehow, I doubt the Monster understands the concept of irony. It’ll take us three days to bleed the stone anyway, so if we can figure out whether or not Q is alive by then--”

“Then what?” Alice asks.

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. But, um… Josh, you should take the stone back to Brakebills, see how fast you can bleed it. Just in case,” Julia locks eyes with Eliot as she says the last bit, silently begging him for understanding. He gives her a small nod.

A few hours later, Josh has slipped back off to Brakebills with the living stone and will text them as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, all they’ve got to do is stall it with Netflix and bullshit. Or, in the event that Quentin is alive, start actually looking for the next step in locating another stone body part. Alice goes back and forth to Brakebills with books a few times and returns with various tomes that might help but probably won’t. She’s really adjusting back into the team like she didn’t betray them all horribly a few months ago.

Eliot tries to nap on the couch, since he’s not playing babysitter for once, but it doesn’t last long because he wakes to the Monster singing loudly, “ _ I’m alive, I’m alive I am so alive, I’m aliiive. So alive _ .”

And that just about does it for him. “Where the fuck did you get the Next to Normal soundtrack from?”

“I  _ told  _ you,” the Monster says, annoyed, “The songs are in my head. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

That cements it. Eliot gets up, grabs the Monster by the shoulders and tries to look past its eyes, into whatever’s behind them that he desperately hopes is Quentin. “If you’re taking requests, how about the one from the key quest?”

The Monster pushes Eliot off him and glares. “Stop that.”

“Sing another song for me,” Eliot encourages.

“No,” the Monster says stubbornly. “No, I won’t.”

Eliot catches Julia and Alice both staring at him.  _ It’s Quentin! _ he mouths.

Eliot listens obsessively for the Monster to start singing  _ Under Pressure, _ spends more time than he usually would around the Monster, just waiting. But the Monster never sings it.

Instead, in the wee hours of the morning, as they all pour over books together, it hums something soft and quiet.

Eliot’s heart sinks and he wonders if he really is just going insane.

The Monster keeps humming it.

Soft, quiet.

A Fillorian lullaby.

Eliot recognizes it now and it hits like a punch to the gut.  _ Okay, asshole _ . Eliot thinks at Quentin. He knew damn well he meant the Queen and Bowie song, not the lullaby Eliot sung to their son every night on the mosaic.

But it’s Quentin. There’s no possible other explanation now. Quentin is alive, which means killing the Monster is off the table.

He looks at Julia, who’s already staring at him so clearly his expression gave something away. She slips around the table, looks to the Monster, and says, “I need to borrow Eliot. We’ll be right back. Alice will keep you company.”

The Monster looks back at Alice, frowning, but it doesn’t object further.

“Iris gave us a spot to meet up,” Julia says out in the hall. “She’s a goddess, maybe she’s got the stone in her and we can just--”

“Let it kill her,” Eliot finishes.

She doesn’t ask him if he’s alright with that, she already knows. They’re at the ‘offering up a sacrifice to appease a god’ level of desperation now, but they’re on the same page at least. Anything’s worth it, if it’s Quentin.

\---

Quentin sings the lullaby for hours before the Monster gets it stuck in his head and hums it out loud for Eliot. He sings it until his voice is hoarse and he’s crying from the memories.

Afterward, he sits alone in the theater for a long time, watches plans come together as Eliot and Julia reveal they’ve got a god to offer up to the Monster. He lets himself tune out and does a lap around the theater.

He finds there’s a door, this time. He can hardly believe it, it must be something new, because he knows this theater. He’s walked every inch of it. He pushes it open and leads to a sort of dark tunnel that reminds him of the corridor of a haunted house. He steps through, letting the door to the theater close behind him and it’s weird, not knowing what’s going on his body for once, but it’s also kind of freeing just to wander.

The tunnel stays straight, no matter how far he goes, and there’s no sign of an endpoint or any branching off paths, it’s just this plain, black tunnel.

Until there’s light at the end of the tunnel

For a second, Quentin wonders if he’s just walked to his own death and this was the Monster finally figuring out a way to get rid of him.

He looks behind him and sees a flat stone wall a few feet back. No door, no path back to the theater. The only way out is through. Quentin takes a breath and keeps walking toward the light, hoping against hope that he’s headed somewhere.

It’s a park, Quentin realizes, as he gets closer. He can’t see much else, but it looks like it’s outside, and he picks up the pace, running toward it now, eager to see what’s next.

He crosses the threshold into the park and it feels like he’s just run into a brick wall. His body shakes and he can suddenly feel everything. He turns, curious what’s left of the tunnel behind him, but there is no tunnel. It’s just Eliot, Julia, Alice, Josh, and another woman he doesn’t recognize. All standing, staring at him.

“Holy shit.”

He can feel his body. He can breathe. He’s seeing out of his own eyes and it’s overwhelming. His hands feel wet and sticky and when he looks down at them, he sees they’re covered in Iris’ blood and Iris’ body is dropped on the ground below him. One of his hands clasps around a large stone and he drops it as soon as he becomes aware of it.

“What’s wrong?” Julia asks.

Quentin laughs, “ _ Jules _ .”

She stares at him.

“I know none of you are going to believe this, but it’s actually me this time. It’s Quentin.”

“Don’t do this again,” Eliot says, taking a step away from him. “We got what you wanted, why the fuck are you--?”

“I’m alive. It  _ lied  _ because it was mad at you. But I’ve been trying--”

“The songs,” Eliot says and there’s that hope in his eyes again.

Quentin nods. “The songs. Sorry. I know my voice isn’t-- Um, I don’t know how I got here or how long it’s going to last. I just wanted to tell you I’m still here.”

Eliot moves forward quickly now, catches Quentin’s shoulder under his hand, and stares at him, looking right into his eyes. “Q?”

The weight of Eliot’s hand pulls back everything that’s happened, the reality of it all, of what Eliot’s been through, and he rambles, “I’m sorry. I’ve been awake the whole time, I’ve seen everything.”

Eliot’s hand drops away and he looks down. Quentin pushes his way forward, back into Eliot’s space, grabbing both of Eliot’s shoulders and making Eliot look him in the eye, “If you get a chance to kill it, you have to take it. I mean it, Eliot, I can’t-- It’s  _ hurting  _ you and I’m locked in there, watching it.”

“Bullshit. That’s bullshit, Q, I’m not going to give up on you. Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after--”

The Mosaic. It’s unspoken, but it’s there. Quentin tries to smile, tries to sound reassuring, “It’s okay. If you can save me, that’d be really nice. But I don’t want to have to watch it kill all of you and then be stuck inside my own head for the rest of forever. Please, Eliot, promise me.”

“I can’t--”

“Promise me!” he can feel something crawling its way from the back of his mind.

“No. I won’t do it, I lo--”

Quentin’s hit with a brick wall again and this time when he recovers from the sensation, he’s back in the theater, only this time there’s nothing on the screen.

_ What’s happening? _ Quentin shouts.

_ I broke the projector while you had your playdate outside. _

_ That was you? _

_ Of course. It’s not like you could just sneak out on your own. You’re too weak for that. _

Quentin stares at the empty room around him and it feels much smaller now without the window outside. Seeing the Monster torturing his friends was one thing, but not knowing… Not knowing if they were alive or dead or if this was just his reality forever….

_ I can show you things sometimes. _

The projector rattles from overhead and screen flickers to life.

It’s Eliot and Julia, crouching together on the opposite side of a room.

They’re not the park anymore, time has passed, but how much time? Is this the apartment?

Their eyes wide and Eliot’s sort of collapsed back into Julia, but he’s pissed and getting back to his feet and Julia’s right there with him, the pair of them angry about--  _ something--  _ and advancing on the Monster together.

The screen shuts off, leaving Quentin alone in the dark.

_ Enjoy the quiet. _


End file.
